Atlantean Language by the Creator of the Klingon Language: Grammars, Dictionaries, New Translations, and Conlangs by Me

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Bob
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Atlantean Language by the Creator of the Klingon Language: Grammars, Dictionaries, New Translations, and Conlangs by Me

Post by Bob »

Dormouse559 wrote: 15 Apr 2020 00:17
Khemehekis wrote: 09 Apr 2020 05:21"Weird and wonderful" is a great way to put it. And I agree that the lexicon disappointingly veers little from English.
I have to admit I was hoping you'd found documentation of Marc Okrand's Atlantean. Ah well [xD] Why can't we live in the universe where "Atlantis" was a smash hit and there are whole wikis about the conlang?
( This is a quote from maybe some other forum here on Conlangs Bulletin Board.

All of the fans of Okrand Atlantean from the 2001 Disney movie "Atlantis: The Lost Empire" are on the 20 year old, 500 member facebook group:

Atlantis the Lost Empire Atlantean Language by Dr. Marc Okrand
https://www.facebook.com/groups/377768309042171/

Here's the poster from the movie, to jog people's memories. You can find other posts by googling them.

Image

It was like a close derivative of "Star Gate" that failed in the theaters because it was up against the live-action "Tomb Raider" movie which probably already had quite a following thanks to the popular video games. Only 90s kids will remember. This was 20 years ago, now, so me doing any work on the language at this point is somewhat funny. But about once every year, I'll put 5 minutes into it, in general. For propriety and posterity.

I have been the leader of the group since 2007 when I was made thus by Group Founder Paul Sherrill Jr. of Okemos, Michigan. I move it to Facebook from Yahoo Groups about 2015. I am also the leader decipherer and promoter of the language. I have a BA Linguistics from Michigan State University from back in 2009. I'm an independent scholar of all 50 or so known hieroglyphic writing systems ( aka logographic writing systems). So my linguistics is not that good because logographic writing systems are very complex. The major families of these are Egyptian, Chinese, Mayan, and Cuneiform. Then I otherwise study lots of ancient languages and have a secondary focus on the 20 or so ancient languages of the Bible.

I just joined this website today, too. I don't think I ever joined it before. I have visited Zompist Bboard for a month or two about 5 times in my life but never the Brown.Edu conlang mailing list. Or maybe once.

I have been posting about Atlantean the last few months to Zompist Bboard:

https://www.verduria.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=651

But most of my posts about it are to that facebook group or to a group I joined a few months ago, the 20,000 member Atlantis: The Lost Empireposting facebook group.

...

We've gotten 100-200 new member from that group the past 3 months on the facebook group. 500 total now. I forget how many total members the Yahoo Group ever had. The last 15 years, there hasn't been much interest in the language. Back around 2006 when I started working on it, there was one other member who would write to me in it. And then the last 2 years, there's been my co-admin "Titus" and we've written to eachother in Atlantean a few times. Otherwise, a few of the people who have written me told me they talked to their friends and family in the language.

And then we get decipherment contributions every few years but people don't do much with the language. It's mostly a fan art sort of thing, you look up the words and letters and put it on your fan art and wait a few months for other fans to notice and show appreciation.

I've been working on it the last few months but I generally only work on the language for a few hours once or twice a year.

I've translated some smaller texts into Atlantean over the years. In 2018, I did the largest translation I had ever done. And then the last few months, I've been putting online an even bigger one. So in some ways, it's mostly just me into the language. But there's some people out there interested in it, so I'm there for them and recently have been searching them out on YouTube and telling them about the facebook group.

A couple years ago, Okrand finally started writing me back. So if you got any questions, please ask. He's been telling me really amazing stuff the past month or so, I hope to put it on the facebook group and in a website.

Here's the links to my webpages on Atlantean, in case anyone doesn't want to go to my Zompist Bboard post or join the facebook group:

2
Okrand's Atlantean: 10.29.2010 Complete Corpus
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2015/0 ... w=flipcard


39
New Quick Atlantean Grammar 10 14 2018
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2018/1 ... w=flipcard

"200k Atlantean Word Dictionary"
https://200katlantean.blogspot.com/

5
Okrand's Atlantean: 9.7.2010 Grammar
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2015/0 ... w=flipcard

7
Okrand's Atlantean: Atlantean Root Etymology
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2015/0 ... w=flipcard


3
Okrand's Atlantean: 9.7.2010 A - E Canonical
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2015/0 ... w=flipcard


4
Okrand's Atlantean: 9.7.2010 E/A - A\ E Canonical Dictionary
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2015/0 ... w=flipcard

26
Okrand's Atlantean: 9.7.2010 E/A - A\ E Canonical Dictionary
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2015/0 ... w=flipcard


6
Okrand's Atlantean: A Reader
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2015/0 ... w=flipcard


8
Okrand's Atlantean: Deciphered Shepherd's Journal
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2015/0 ... w=flipcard



9
Okrand's Atlantean: Deciphering the Shepherd's Journal
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2015/0 ... w=flipcard


10
Okrand's Atlantean: Fanonical Dictionary E to A
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2015/0 ... w=flipcard


11
Okrand's Atlantean: Home / Image / Reader
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2015/0 ... w=flipcard



12
Okrand's Atlantean: Links
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2015/0 ... w=flipcard



13
Okrand's Atlantean: Numbers in Atlantean and New Atlantean
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2015/0 ... w=flipcard



14
Okrand's Atlantean: Old Wikipedia Article
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2015/0 ... w=flipcard

15
Okrand's Atlantean: The Tomb Raider - ATLE Connection
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2015/0 ... w=flipcard



41
Atlantean Translation of 2 James Bateman Stories
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2018/1 ... w=flipcard

42
Study of Subordinate Clause Markers from the Atlantean Corpus
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2018/1 ... w=flipcard


...

Then here's what I'm working on now:

New Texts in Okrand Atlantean with an Ancient African Conlang: Medieval West Africa Texts
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2020/0 ... w=flipcard

Images for Previous Post:
New Texts in Okrand Atlantean with an Ancient Africa Conlang: Medieval West Africa Texts
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2020/0 ... w=flipcard

...

To top it all off, I also specialize in the comparative anthropology of beliefs and ideas (comparative religion), but it's after logographic writing systems and the 20 or ancient Biblical languages. And then I've also spent more effort than anyone else, it seems, in documenting and deciphering conlangs and pseudo-conlangs from famous books, tv, and movies. I've also studied those documented and deciphered by others. I also make my own conlangs, though not very big ones usually, and have studied many conlangs of others over the years.

I'm not on the largest facebook conlang groups at all. About 5 years ago, one of the largest groups had me as admin and I wouldn't do bad things, so all the largest facebook conlang groups sent me into permanent exile. I think the admin of one of the largest groups got jealous because I made a conlang written in Chinese characters. Seriously. And I don't do much outside of facebook groups and my own conlang facebook group has never been popular.

Other conlangers, maybe mostly those on Zompist Bboard, never seem to like my conlangs and conscripts. But I only have gone on there 5 or so times in my life. I've been conlanging also since about 2006. I usually don't put a lot of time into my conlangs but just make a quick grammar sketch and focus on a few grammar things I want to explore and translate a few sentences. I also do weird stuff. When I do conscripts, I focus on things in logographic writing systems that no one has ever heard of, so no one is interested. I've tried to explain what I've done.

I conlang about once a month but only for 2 hours. And it's only once a year or two years that I get on Zompist Bboard or one of the smallest facebook groups to share my conlangs. People don't appreciate that I specialize in the linguistics of logographic writing systems, so what I want to do with conlangs is different from the mainstream. I also find that there's a lot of discouragement around the internet for conlangs or natural languages which are based on non-Indo-European languages.
Last edited by Bob on 05 Aug 2020 18:27, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Atlantean Language by the Creator of the Klingon Language: Grammars, Dictionaries, New Translations, and Conlangs by

Post by elemtilas »

Bob wrote: 09 Jul 2020 08:09 I'm not on the largest facebook conlang groups at all. About 5 years ago, one of the largest groups had me as admin and I wouldn't do bad things, so all the largest facebook conlang groups sent me into permanent exile. I think the admin of one of the largest groups got jealous because I made a conlang written in Chinese characters. Seriously. And I don't do much outside of facebook groups and my own conlang facebook group has never been popular.

Other conlangers, maybe mostly those on Zompist Bboard, never seem to like my conlangs and conscripts. But I only have gone on there 5 or so times in my life. I've been conlanging also since about 2006. I usually don't put a lot of time into my conlangs but just make a quick grammar sketch and focus on a few grammar things I want to explore and translate a few sentences. I also do weird stuff. When I do conscripts, I focus on things in logographic writing systems that no one has ever heard of, so no one is interested. I've tried to explain what I've done.
Perhaps you can actually try and coherently explain it here! Just start up a thread about one of your languages and its writing system. As you know, presentation is well more than half the battle. If you don't present well, people get frustrated. If you present well, people will find it easy to understand. If you think you do weird stuff, just remember, you're among dozens and scores of people who do weird stuff.
I conlang about once a month but only for 2 hours. And it's only once a year or two years that I get on Zompist Bboard or one of the smallest facebook groups to share my conlangs. People don't appreciate that I specialize in the linguistics of logographic writing systems, so what I want to do with conlangs is different from the mainstream. I also find that there's a lot of discouragement around the internet for conlangs or natural languages which are based on non-Indo-European languages.
Well, you know the old bromide: practice makes perfect! Keep at it! The more you work on your own invented languages, the better you'll get at it! The more you work on presentation skills, the more people will become engaged with you and your work. I for one would be very happy to hear about your own invented languages!, rather than the invented languages of others that you're adding on to.

I'm not sure what you're basing that last statement on. It is quite incorrect. In fact, it's almost the opposite! More often than not, it's the invented language based on PIE that gets panned!
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Re: Atlantean Language by the Creator of the Klingon Language: Grammars, Dictionaries, New Translations, and Conlangs by

Post by Frislander »

I'm not gonna bother saying much here because honestly enough troll-feeding has been done on the ZBB as it is bust just a notice to everyone that you really needn't bother responding to him, you'll only feed the trolls, just go look what's been happening over on the ZBB and boot him out now to save you the bother.
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Re: Atlantean Language by the Creator of the Klingon Language: Grammars, Dictionaries, New Translations, and Conlangs by

Post by Bob »

elemtilas wrote: 09 Jul 2020 09:39 ...
Thanks, Frislander. I'll keep that in mind. I don't have as much time on the internet as most Zompist Bboard conlangs seem to have.

If I say, "Accusative -tem", and then give a bunch of examples, I think that's clear enough. I otherwise say and present things in such a way that I think people who know enough linguistics should understand or be able to look up and understand. I don't even say things like ACC, I write Accusative.

I'm not a troll. I have my own way of presenting conlangs yet listen to suggestions.
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Re: Atlantean Language by the Creator of the Klingon Language: Grammars, Dictionaries, New Translations, and Conlangs by

Post by Bob »

Here, I also posted this in the thread where I got the initial quote. This is a reply to what el. said here and there.

viewtopic.php?p=302019#p302019

I do most of my conlang work on famous conlangs from books tv and movies. For most of them, nobody else works on them and so it allows me to explore the people and art associated with the conlangs.

It's maybe like how I spend most of my research time working on the 50 known logographic writing systems, the past 15 years: I find real languages and writing systems far more interesting than conlangs and conscripts. And of conlangs, I find those in books tv and movies most interesting. Well, it's a bit more complicated than that. See, over the years I have sought out my niches as a language scientist. Since few had deciphered most conlangs in famous books, tv, and movies, or studied them all together, I decided to do that. Whenever I join these conlang groups, I say all that, plus my degree, and then when the members don't understand, I roll my eyes. Because this is what language scientists do, they chose a specialization. I decided not to become an academic but I still have the BA Linguistics and contribute to modern language science.

And then the last two years, I've been doing large translations into these languages as further outreach and statement regarding them. I've even had criticisms of Klingon which were brilliant but, maybe not surprisingly, not welcomed.

But I do get some recognition and encouragement from fellow language scientist scholars both professional and amateur. The problem is that few others specialize in what I do and it's very specific. A big part of why I do my posts is to try to encourage others to follow in my footsteps. Some day, someone will, and hopefully they'll find my work and realize what a great job I did.
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Re: Atlantean Language by the Creator of the Klingon Language: Grammars, Dictionaries, New Translations, and Conlangs by

Post by Bob »

elemtilas wrote: 09 Jul 2020 09:39 ...
Here, I also posted this in the thread where I got the initial quote. This is a reply to what el. said here and there.

viewtopic.php?p=302019#p302019

I do most of my conlang work on famous conlangs from books tv and movies. For most of them, nobody else works on them and so it allows me to explore the people and art associated with the conlangs.

It's maybe like how I spend most of my research time working on the 50 known logographic writing systems, the past 15 years: I find real languages and writing systems far more interesting than conlangs and conscripts. And of conlangs, I find those in books tv and movies most interesting. Well, it's a bit more complicated than that. See, over the years I have sought out my niches as a language scientist. Since few had deciphered most conlangs in famous books, tv, and movies, or studied them all together, I decided to do that. Whenever I join these conlang groups, I say all that, plus my degree, and then when the members don't understand, I roll my eyes. Because this is what language scientists do, they chose a specialization. I decided not to become an academic but I still have the BA Linguistics and contribute to modern language science.

And then the last two years, I've been doing large translations into these languages as further outreach and statement regarding them. I've even had criticisms of Klingon which were brilliant but, maybe not surprisingly, not welcomed.

But I do get some recognition and encouragement from fellow language scientist scholars both professional and amateur. The problem is that few others specialize in what I do and it's very specific. A big part of why I do my posts is to try to encourage others to follow in my footsteps. Some day, someone will, and hopefully they'll find my work and realize what a great job I did.
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Re: Atlantean Language by the Creator of the Klingon Language: Grammars, Dictionaries, New Translations, and Conlangs by

Post by Bob »

elemtilas wrote: 09 Jul 2020 09:39 ...
Oh, and I also get to meet the fan communities of these conlangs and pseudo-conlangs from famous books tv and movies. And I'm an anthropologist who has spent many years in East Asia, though I am from Michigan in the USA Midwest so this has been very nice for me.

Back in 2006, I looked into the Atlantean Language, realized it had not yet been deciphered, and decided to put in the work and do so. I thought it was a good niche and kept up with it. It turns out, it's a very important niche in modern language science, along with specializing in the study of writing systems, but nobody realizes it. Which is great, because you know what that implies.

If I did extensive work on my own conlangs, where would be the communities for that? It's totally different from interacting with (mostly American) fans who are now 50 or 25 and trying to reach them about the importance of science and what it is that language scientists, and myself, do.
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Re: Atlantean Language by the Creator of the Klingon Language: Grammars, Dictionaries, New Translations, and Conlangs by

Post by Bob »

What I've been doing recently:

I've been focusing on working on "Okrand Atlantean" by the maker of Klingon the past few months. I'm the unofficial chief decipherer and lead expert in the language. There's not much interest in it, unlike Okrand's Vulcan, recently.

I totally revised the corpus, did a bunch of other things, and have been translating about 7 texts of 5 to 20 pages from the West African 1960s oral Epic of Son-Jara (Mandike, Mande, Niger-Congo and the c 1920s "New Fire" anthology of bilingual myth-derived fairy tales in Creek (Native American, Muskogean).

New Texts in Okrand Atlantean with an Ancient Africa Conlang: Medieval West Africa Texts
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2020/0 ... w=flipcard

Images for Previous Post:
New Texts in Okrand Atlantean with an Ancient Africa Conlang: Medieval West Africa Texts
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2020/0 ... w=flipcard

The Older Corpus:
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2015/0 ... w=flipcard

I just finished putting online draft translations of it all in Atlantean. Before I finish typing up the "Ancient Africa Conlang" translations I made to go with it, I've done a few things and am just about to make public private communications from Marc Okrand about how he remembers that the language works.

Typing it all up was laborious because it was mostly re-arranging the words to match the actual attested word order of the language. Not that a language like that would have strict word order. But I kept a strict word order just to show continuity with the established corpus and attention to non-English idiom. The most interesting part of that translation was making up a bunch of new words from Middle Chinese. Otherwise, it's just been a lot of grunt work without much room for invention and language science exploration. Because the grammar of the language is already established. And to achieve the desired effect, I have to keep looking back and forth all around the corpus to try to keep the words and idioms somewhat consistent. But it's interesting. And I did something like that last summer with unprecedented new translations into 1600s Massachusett, my opinion of the second most important historical New World Indigenous language.

It was mostly all inspired by Tab Murphy posting draft scripts to the movie on the facebook group Empireposting.

It's only a big deal because he hasn't said much in 20 years. I'm not sure if he remembers it all correctly, though. He notably told me that the "Thessalonian" quote from the movie was not made by him. So I think this means it was probably made by Tab Murphy the script writer. Nobody ever made much of the quote but it's a shock because the quote has always seemed to have something to do with the grammar of Atlantean.

"... And what's really amazing is that if you deconstructed Latin, overlaid it with a little Sumerian, throw in a dash of Thessalonian: You'd be getting close to their basic grammatical structure. Or at least you'd be in the same ballpark. Which is almost exactly like certain obscure offshoots of Choctaw! Well, obviously using Creek pronunciation, but you get the point, proving once and for all, that Atlantean trade routes accessed the New World centuries before the Bronze Age! Take that, Mr. Harcourt!" - Milo Thatch, talking to Helga and Rourke.

( Page 55 of The Illustrated Script. )

But I think that in the future I will ignore that and make variant grammar more in line with all this above. Okrand Atlantean is really very grammatically different from Choctaw in every way and we have a sizeable corpus such that the effect is hard to escape.

So until I finish this project, I'm trying to use it to read books that I otherwise would not read. I have specific ones in mind for Atlantean and specific ones for the Ancient Africa conlang.

I've mostly been posting about it to my Atlantean Language facebook, my website, and Zompist Bboard. I keep getting calls for interlinear glosses but so far have only done one page for a sample and don't plan on doing that much more. I posted grammars or links to grammars and dictionaries and plan to post my hand-written and occasionally glossed notes. But glossing it all would just be too much. It's amazing I did what I did, not only in Atlantean but in this Ancient Africa Conlang.

My websites.
https://anylanguageatall411.blogspot.co ... w=flipcard

The 20 year old Atlantean Language online community. I was made head admin back in 2007. (Which is a sign of how little interest people have in it, as I have not much enthusiasm for the language compared to the leaders of Klingon Studies.)

Atlantis the Lost Empire Atlantean Language by Dr. Marc Okrand
https://www.facebook.com/groups/377768309042171/

The main post to Zompist Bboard.
https://www.verduria.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=651
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Re: Atlantean Language by the Creator of the Klingon Language: Grammars, Dictionaries, New Translations, and Conlangs by

Post by Bob »

I have a thread already going on about Okrand Atlantean on this website and on Zompist Bboard. But this was such a big deal, I decided to make a separate thread for it. No one has heard anything from him about the actual grammar of Atlantean in 20 years, despite that we've all been writing him the whole time. I, at least, could not figure out the relative clause and subordinate clause particles. Otherwise, it's stuff we (really most I) figured out back in about 2006. But it's nice to hear it from him.

Image

New Okrand Atlantean Grammar Notes from Okrand Himself, Maker of Klingon
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=7274

Here's the grammar, for reference. You can also see the Wikipedia article but it's not as up to date. There's links to grammar, corpus, dictionary, and other webpages at the new thread.

https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2018/1 ... w=flipcard
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Re: Atlantean Language by the Creator of the Klingon Language: Grammars, Dictionaries, New Translations, and Conlangs by

Post by Bob »

I'm going to discontinue my posting on Zompist Bboard about Okrand Atlantean and post about it here.

I'm getting online new translations I've made into it.

https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2020/0 ... w=flipcard

There's texts A through G that I've translated into Okrand Atlantean and a conlang I made based on Bantu languages. The texts are from the West African oral Epic of Son-Jara, documented in the 1960s. I started doing this project before this summer's related controversies began but have continued the project in hopes of tolerance on the part of my audience. Hopes sometimes disappointed.

Today I typed up Texts D to F for the "Ancient Africa Conlang". I might interlinear gloss the whole thing but really should not considering all the other more important projects I have to do. When I upload all my handwritten versions of the translations, which include glosses of the more idiomatic parts, it should be easy to figure everything out. Interlinear glosses are a degree of accessibility which I should probably not give to this project, considering the immense amount of time I've already put into it and my scholarship progam taken with respect to it.

I recently finished adding new hand-crafted words made by a Bruce Irving of California who has been adding very actively adding to Vabungula and Láadan. And also Yuri Mihálik of Israel and myself Larry Rogers of Michigan. I collected words by all of us, with the help of others, too, from the main online community for the Atlantean Language, named after it and on facebook, and added them to the current translated texts. I also made grammatical variants to make the language more like Choctaw with reference to a quote from the movie.

I also looked up Swahili, Bantu, and Niger-Congo syntax on Wikipedia and made some notes to maybe use for a native word order for the Ancient Africa Conlang. There wasn't much but there was enough. Aside from complex verb chains, there's not much to word order after all.

Ancient Africa Conlang post to Zompist Bboard, including initial and medial grammars:
https://www.verduria.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=645

Original Post to Zompist Bboard about the Atlantean Language by the Maker of Klingon:
https://www.verduria.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=651
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Re: Atlantean Language by the Creator of the Klingon Language: Grammars, Dictionaries, New Translations, and Conlangs by

Post by masako »

Yes...yes. This place is much more your speed, good fellow.

I will watch in silence.

Cheers.
g

o

n

e
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Re: Atlantean Language by the Creator of the Klingon Language: Grammars, Dictionaries, New Translations, and Conlangs by

Post by Bob »

masako wrote: 21 Jul 2020 01:51 Yes...yes. This place is much more your speed, good fellow.

I will watch in silence.

Cheers.
What do you know about my speed? I doubt you know much from how you pestered me mindlessly on Zompist Bboard and I had you blocked most of the time.

Do you also specialize in the comparative study of logographic writing systems? Have you deciphered many conlangs from books, tv, or movies? Or have you studied many of those which were already deciphered or which their creators presented in a grammar? And have you studied those thing which are like conlangs, pseudo-conlangs, pseudo-conscripts, asemic writing, ritual languages, language games?

How long have you studied historical linguistics or etymologies in multiple languages? Do you have any degrees in linguistics? In what did you specialize during them?
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Re: Atlantean Language by the Creator of the Klingon Language: Grammars, Dictionaries, New Translations, and Conlangs by

Post by Bob »

masako wrote: 21 Jul 2020 01:51 Yes...yes. This place is much more your speed, good fellow.

I will watch in silence.

Cheers.
I showed appreciation and respect to you and the rest of the members on Zompist Bboard, even all the bullies. Unfortunately, certain others there did not likewise show forth excellence in scholarship. I'm happy to read what others make and offer my encouragement and appreciation and whatever thoughts I have.

If this was in 2006, I would not be so offended at bullies and people who do not read my posts carefully. But I really would be failing scholarly excellence to not speak up when I am not being treated as I ought, conlanging being so close to language science and anthropology, of which I am a scholar now of some 15 years and much uncomfortable world travel. Among other accomplishments. I did not mention before that I have been a teacher many years and come from whole families of teachers.

It is a shame that there is no Bradrn or some of the other fellows on this group, though, they always showed me proper honor, inter-cultural sensitivity, and a lack of bigotry. Bradrn did not always please me but as of late he was quite agreeable.

It is outrageous that Mark Rosenfelder chased me off his website. I run several large and celebrated facebook groups on conlanging, ancient languages, and "any language at all", and am a long time celebrated member on several more. It is a sign of excellence that I value long-time members and former and present admins. I hardly ever joined or posted to any other group but his and he would each time unjustly chase me off. I think he does not care for my specializations, among other things.

Well ... all language scientists must have specializations. We cannot all be very well versed in all things in linguistics, it's just too broad a field. Professional linguists can each teach Linguistics 101 and then whatever their specialization is at the 101 level. I am below that in ways and beyond that in ways. Instead, I have teaching experience across Asia, the esteem of my diligent students, ... and I think far more time than I would have had as a professor to attend to my pioneering study of the language science (linguistics) of comparative logographic writing systems.

What's more, many of my friends from rural Asia are now dead, life expectancy being far shorter there than here in Michigan. So I am in my 30s it has been a dreadfully long 15 years and feel far older and far more traveled than I would otherwise. Hopefully I will have more welcome at other online conlang communities than I had at Zompist Bboard. But if not, so be it, this is all the price of doing pioneer research and making amazing discoveries. And I can read a lot more than I care to put into my own conlangs at any given point in time. Everywhere in the West, I am reviled for being a recent Asian immigrant. So be it.

I do have students who show me proper respect and who are diligent. And teachers who are more agreeable than those I have found recently on Zompist Bboard.

I am now 15 years into my pioneering studies of all 50 known logographic writing systems. This is all just a short break for the sake of connecting with fans of "Atlantis: The Lost Empire", mostly people 10 years younger than me, surprisingly, and with other conlangers. If this was 2006 again, well, I think I could face such bullies easier. But I'm quite into my program of study so if any don't like my conlangs, I hope they're nice enough about it. Otherwise, I'll just block them and carry on.

You know how I've gotten so far in 15 years in the comparative study of logographic writing systems? Well, I just get the books and articles by the top scholars and work hard to understand every little bit. And then I re-do the work of others, looking for missed avenues of discovery and exploration. But I don't have it ready at the top of my head. It's in my notes and comes to me while I'm working on some particular thing. There's all this complex terminology and little details.

I also study reference grammars of all sorts, in part just for the conlang study and conlang making. If I am not welcome and well-received at a given place, well, it should not trouble me as it does. For I know well that to be a pioneer, one must be the first and only, at least in some ways. And I am what I am in many ways. What I have here after 15 years is what I have, and I am long accustomed to giving my full energies to the comparative study of logographic writing systems. This is me on holiday for some time, trying to give people interested some window into my unique and vast reading. I also have studied comparative religions and comparative mythology a lot. And a few other topics I've focused on just a bit, notably the symbolism and etymology of animals; prehistory, animals, drugs, food, history and prehistory of minorities.
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Re: Atlantean Language by the Creator of the Klingon Language: Grammars, Dictionaries, New Translations, and Conlangs by

Post by Man in Space »

I believe he meant “this board is more receptive to your style of posting” and wasn’t making a statement about your posting frequency. It’s an idiom.
Twin Aster megathread

AVDIO · VIDEO · DISCO

CC = Common Caber
CK = Classical Khaya
CT = Classical Ĝare n Tim Ar
Kg = Kgáweq'
PB = Proto-Beheic
PO = Proto-O
PTa = Proto-Taltic
STK = Sisỏk Tlar Kyanà
Tm = Təmattwəspwaypksma
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Re: Atlantean Language by the Creator of the Klingon Language: Grammars, Dictionaries, New Translations, and Conlangs by

Post by Xonen »

Please do not bring personal vendettas from elsewhere on the internet onto this board.

Also, a reminder on the House Rules here: no personal attacks. Civil criticism and advice on how to improve certain things are fine - and indeed, the main reason why a lot of people bother posting their work at all - but if you start attacking other people's personality, background or views (especially if those are views you're only speculating about), you're crossing the line.

Another thing I'd like to remind people about is the Report function: if you feel someone's breaking the rules, you can click the little "!" icon at the top right of their post and bring your complaint to the attention of the board administration. This is often preferable to getting into a personal argument in a public thread or via PM. You can also report a PM, in which case the board administration can see both the report and the reported message itself.
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Re: Atlantean Language by the Creator of the Klingon Language: Grammars, Dictionaries, New Translations, and Conlangs by

Post by Bob »

Xonen wrote: 21 Jul 2020 16:41 ...
Okay, thank-you. Someone else just showed me the House Rules and I read them all. I will try to keep studying them on and off.

Wow, look! There's Linguifex! That guy is famous. Hi, Linguifex. Thanks for your help.
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Re: Atlantean Language by the Creator of the Klingon Language: Grammars, Dictionaries, New Translations, and Conlangs by

Post by Bob »

Xonen wrote: 21 Jul 2020 16:41 ...
Okay, thank-you. Someone else just showed me the House Rules and I read them all. I will try to keep studying them on and off.
Linguifex wrote: 21 Jul 2020 12:58 ...
Wow, look! There's Linguifex! That guy is famous. Hi, Linguifex. Thanks for your help.
Bob
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Re: Atlantean Language by the Creator of the Klingon Language: Grammars, Dictionaries, New Translations, and Conlangs by

Post by Bob »

So, against my better judgement, today I did a non-scientific and very prose English gloss of Texts A and B in Okrand Atlantean out of ABCDEFG. I read the standards in the translation section and wonder if I can still post my glosses. I plan to add notes giving standard scientific glosses of common morphemes.

Wait a minute, maybe this should be in the Translations forum. Because most of these posts about Atlantean are about my new translations, not any of my other side studies going along with it. Well, maybe next time.

Oh, it didn't take long. I don't know why I'm doing it, I have much more important things to do.

Okrand Atlantean is not hard to gloss.

-TEM is a common morpheme and it means "Oblique Case" which is "Accusative and Dative Case". I don't even put anything in the gloss for it. I think the standard scientific grammatical abbreviation for it is OBL but I'd have to look it up. Maybe OBLQ.

Then there's
-EN-TEM [ -PL-OBL ]

-IMOT is a typical common morpheme pair. -IM-OT is [ -PAST-3.SG ] but I'd rather just gloss it as:
( run NUROSH )
he ran NUROSH-IMOT

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix ... reviations

Then there's:
YOS subordinate clause marker
BET relative clause marker when the clause is the object of a verb
"I think that he is dressed very strangely." (Canonical Atlantean example.)
DEG relative clause marker

I'm just glossing these as that or which as I feel like it.

If I had made up a ton more noun cases, I could really go to town with grammatical abbreviations. But I didn't.

Instead, I added all sorts of odd verb aspects and moods, actually the sort of thing Bantu languages have, though I've probably been seeing it in these new reference grammars of New World Indigenous languages. Just to make the language less boring, as it's a lot like Latin and I can read the stuff quite fluently and am generally quite sick of it. But I think I will just gloss these in a colloquial manner, and then add something more grammatical after a comma. And then there's a list of these in my hand written notes that I want to put online at the end of all the glosses. And which I should probably do now in case my enthusiasm fails and I abandon the project and go back to another.

What is the purpose of glossing these huge texts? Nobody cares about Okrand Atlantean. And they're huge texts. Well, it won't take too long and it's good form. Folks, everybody's dying and flipping out where I live due to coronavirus, so it's fortunate I can get anything done at all. No need to analyze it. I even might not have to worry about future projects if some misfortune befalls me before Jan 1st or whenever the vaccines come out. I should be trying to put online my notes on logographic writing systems. I should. But I probably won't. It's too late for all that now, we'll just see how it goes. I'm a bit fat but at least I'm quite young. Still, it does get young people and the less fat sort of people. Hmm.

Yes, you know, I really should be making sure to get my notes on logographic writing systems online. What if? I'll think about it.
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